A new version of our Game Last Call:for alcohol is on the App Store.

Here is the app store link if you don’t know about it;P

Yes we did think a lot of this game while drinking so  but I did a few updates to add more polish and fun. I know it seems obvious but here are a couple of pointers for developing on the iPhone:

• Make clickable option/text/UI reactive. Player with fat finger want to know they have clicked something, and sometimes they and their pudgy little paws tap wrongly and the game just sits there ..Curses your users will say, this game sucks!
• Test it on as many version of the iPhone you can get your hands on. A game that runs fine on the 3GS  runs terrible on a 3G (which I happened to finally get access to when my sister was around). None of my testers every told me so and they probably won’t.
• When you are loading something and it take a while..tell them so by displaying the word “Loading..” or have a progress bar…Curses! this game sucks it’s hung!
• It’s never to late to make your game better
• Marketing your game is a good idea (yes you can get all the sympathy buys and buys for people off Facebook/Twitter you like) but actually putting your butt out there and pushing your game is a good idea
• There is a such a thing as bad marketing…make sure you are ready with Press Releases
• Add social add-ons…researching OpenFeint now;P

For the past week or so, I have been investigating various Remoting solutions that I can implement for the Flex Games I have currently developing. The basic features that I am looking for were:

• Translation of complex data types (being able to map classes on the client and matched on the server)
• PHP supported
• Compressed data format
• Transparent RPC mapping

I initially started with AMFPHP but switched to ZendAMF. AMFPHP seems to be falling behind in support with the last release in 2008 which is decades in Internet time. Zend AMF is also backed by Adobe which is a good sign. On the side note, iPhone integration looks pretty good to with a Cocoa AMF. I would have preferred C++ but I guess it will do in  pinch for now. I will be testing that next week or so.

Zend seems a bit fat, because you have to also include the Zend Framework as well. That’s something I’m going to have to figure out to see if it can add value to services I am writing.